chicken and garlic with chard

Have you ever been to a wine tasting? I have too. But, have you ever been to a garlic tasting? I had not until today.

One of the girls I work with at Granite Hill Camping Resort told me about a place nearby called Hacienda Shiloh.It is an herb farm near Gettysburg. They have 23 different kinds of garlic there. Jim and I drove over there today after breakfast. The short drive to get there was a treat in itself, a twisty mountain road through the forest, where we had to slow down to keep from hitting a huge deer that lept across the road in front of us.

At Hacienda Shiloh, there is a gift shop, the garlic barn, a greenhouse, and of course, the gardens.They have flowers and herbs growing everywhere. Of course it wasn’t as beautiful as it could be because we have been in a drought here, but still, it was fabulous.

Our first stop was the gift shop. They have tons of dried herbs for both medicinal and culinary uses.Garlic jelly, garlic powder, minced garlic, garlic pesto, garlic granules, garlic cookbooks, and garlic utensils. If is has to do with garlic, you can get it there. After we looked around in the gift shop, we walked down past the vegetable garden to the garlic barn, where they had all the different kinds of garlic hanging up to dry. The nice lady (I can not remember her name, dang it) broke off cloves of several different kinds for us to taste. We both liked the Italian garlic best, so we bought a bunch of it.

We also got some garlic scapes, which are the tiny little bulblets from the flower that grows out the top of a garlic plant. I had never even seen anything like them before. She said you take them home and pinch them off of the flower heads, and store them in a zip lock bag in the refrigerator. Sprinkle a few in a salad for a burst of garlic flavor. Yum!

As we were walking back to the gift shop to pay for our purchases, I happened to see some chard growing in her vegetable garden. I asked her if she would sell me some of it, and of course she did. She got our her scissors and cut me a handful of it, both red and green. As she was cutting it she told me she has fresh herbs, too. So, I got her to cut me some fresh basil, my favorite herb.

Back in the gift shop, I rounded out my purchase with a Autumn Cranberry Rub and some Mushroom Sea Salt.The Autumn Cranberry Rub has cranberries, orange zest, rosemary and sea salt. She recommended rubbing it on chicken or fish. The Mushroom Sea Salt has powdered oyster, boletes, porcini, shitake, and woodear mushrooms. I can not wait to try it.The last thing I picked out was four sample sizes of herbal teas. All of the things I bought came to $16.10. What a deal!Oh, I forgot about the little bag of shallots, too.

When I got home with all this stuff, here is whatI made for dinner:

1 chicken breast, skinned, deboned, and cut into bite size pieces

20-25 cloves of garlic (I sliced some and left some whole)

2 shallots, diced

1 bunch of chard, washed, and cut up (I cut up some of the more tender stems, too) olive oil salt and pepper to taste

Heat the olive oil in a skillet. Add the garlic and shallots, and sautee until tender.Add the chicken and stir fry until the chicken is done.Meantime, steam the chard in the microwave for about three minutes. When the chicken is done, add in the chard and sautee about 2 minutes.Serve over gluten free spaghetti or angel hair pasta.

I usually make this with broccoli, but since I had the chard, I used it instead. Oh MY God!Delish!

The lady at Hacienda Shiloh said she will ship anywhere in the country. She is working on getting a website. If you would like to have her product and price list, write to her at: